Mathematical Digest

Short Summaries of Articles about Mathematicsin the Popular Press

This article discusses ideas of an atomspheric physicist who believes that theaccuracy of mathematical models used for weather prediction could be improvedby injecting the models with a dose of randomness. The phenomenon that led himto this idea is known as inertia-gravity waves, which are produced as theearth's gravitational field drags the atmosphere around. His experiments withliquids spinning in a bucket "have convinced him that forecasters shouldreplace some of the painstakingly calculated values of temperature and pressurein their models with random numbers to stand in for the unknown effect ofinertia-gravity waves."